Metal Reviews

Touche.

the crusades had lot of good qualities. The soldiers returning from the crusades having seen the luxuries of the east definatly started to stir the stagnant, catholic suppressed population that , untill that point , had only made minut progress towards leaving the dark age behind.

not that they were good, but the first crusade did at least some good.

That is true and the contact with other peoples led to exchange of information and some technology, and so forth, but still on the whole I'd rather they not have happened. The 4th Crusade was particularly nefarious.

i first thought that splitting the coutnry between sunites and shiites was the best solution, but then how would the coalition/government go about doing it?

to pull out at this point would be a disastrous, and with the current number things are still chaotic. the only option really seems to increase the numbers and finally stabilize the country, otherwise it would be lives, time and money poured down the drain!

If the best thing you can say about the crusades is that they gave the soldiers a bit of a holiday... For fuck's sake. Was that worth the countless thousands that died because they didn't believe exactly the right thing, from the people massacred in France, to the many Jews and Muslims raped, robbed and killed in the east and everywhere inbetween, not to mention the unbelievably sick spectacle that was the Children's Crusade? From what I've read (and I have read it a bit) it seems the only contact with locals was to ascertain if they were heretics or not. The Catholic repressed masses were repressed for centuries yet, you can't say the Crusades did much to help. I'd bloody well rather they didn't happen too!

Yeah, IMO it's completely impossible. You'd have to evict thousands (millions?) of people by force, and then you'd have to find new houses for each of them on the other side of the country.

not to mention the struggles! "hey, they have more land" "hey their land is more fertile" "hey the sun rises sooner on their side!" "hey they have more oil!" and so on....

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Hey guys! I have a great idea! Lets sack Constantinople!

A flawless plan for fighting the heretics. I still say that the jihadists should destroy Medina or Mecca if they want to compete with the crusaders.

Ya, the crusades fucking sucked. I remember once seeing an editiorial in the paper which stated that "the crusades weren't that bad." Being a history nerd, this was the only time I got angry enough about something written in the newspaper to actually write a letter.

Well, we did make the damn mess, so I suppose we should finish cleaning it up.

Now how to do that after 4 years of horrible mismanagement, underfunding of forces there, and needlessly wasted life is a damn good question. A question I don't think anyone has a clear answer to.

My thoughts are that all Islams understand is dictatorships and facism, and they seem to like things that way. Let them have it. Put another asswipe in there to rule them with an iron fist and be done with it. At least 18 year old boys won't be getting killed.

Flawless indeed!(I'm sure you are familiar with this but I wanted to talk about it for those that don't know)

Destroy the one Christian Empire that had successfully held the Arab world out of Europe through the most direct route for centuries. (The Byzantines obviously couldn't do anything to spare the Spainards from the Moors though)

Sure the Byzantines recovered Constantinople 60 years later, but would never again have the power to resist the Turkish tide.

So the net result of the 4th Crusade(Still cool that Bolt Thrower named an album that) was a depraved Christian slaughter of other Christians in the name of wanton greed which paved the way for the eventual Ottoman domination of the Balkans for 4 centuries. And the fatal blow to the Byzantine Empire: The longest lasting Christian Empire in history which had perserved western learning during the dark ages and contributed some of the greatest art the world has ever know.

So yeah, the 4th Crusade was a fucking travesty!

yeah but if they didn't happen the middle ages would have gone on for an indefinite amount of time longer. Its only terrible things that can act as a catalyst for such change. Especialy when the catholic church is inhibiting all change with every thing they did ( with exception to the crusades.)
What other than the crusades was going to get the crowned heads of europe to pay for a massive number of men to travel to the middle east and collect all this technology and knowledge of luxuries that existed out there. At this time the church was preaching that there was no happines or comfort in this world and you had to just bite your lip and deal with the plaques and other scourges, even if you had it better than every one else in europe. At the bottom of the system, you owned nothing, and lived no better than slaves. Complete with the risk of someone killing you outright for nearly no reason.

All these serfs went to fightand die, just to make sure that in the next life, they didn't have it as bad. They see alll these wonderfull things the turks and persians possesed. Then they went back to their villages all over europe and he ideas spread. When else do we see such incredible cultural diffusion in europe?

The crusades were purely political. They had religious leaders callign for them, but it as not a movement amongst the men to go fight for there religious beliefs, it was political leaders making war. If one compares the 1st crusade to all of europes dark age wars, you can see way more came out of it than a strip of land being held and cities being razed like in the others. I don't like that there was war, but thats a fact of history. At least the 1st crusade did good too.

its notthat muslims don't understand anything else its that you can't opress a state composed of multiple nations for decades and then let them loose and expect things to be honky dory.

Its the same thing imperial powers did all over africa and resulted in all sorts of ethnicly fueled wars once they left.

its like takeing two kids who hate each other, putting them in a broom closet with a bigger kid threatenign to kick the shit out of them if they fight. Then do that for a few days, with the kids gettign more and morep issed off, and then change out the big dude, for a guy saying "can't we all just get along".

I would say that even if the crusades hadn't happened, the middle ages would have ended at a similar time. Most philosophy/theology/science that reinvigorated western thought came from Spain, not the crusaders, though the sack of Constantinople also led to a lot of importing of eastern ideas.

Surely, though, the first actual change was when Luther wrote his reformation, which wasn't until years later? Right up until the 1800s serfdom still existed in some form or another in various parts of Europe, and it was the French revolution that was primarily the catalyst for change, I'd have thought. Saying the Crusades did good is trying a bit too hard, don't you think?

And cultural diffusion in Europe? What cultural diffusion? They'd already rounded up those who the Catholics deemed as heretics, expulsing the Jews etc. This all went on for years! I don't see that the crusades did any good at all, frankly, other than serving as a warning to us nowadays. Calling pointless slaughter in the name of Christ progress of any shape, size or form...?

Heraclitus said "panta rhei": everything streams, but if you'd ask me, everything streams is fucking circles, especially history. I have yet to find something that doesn't occur periodically, even the devellopment of music seems subject. And now again some crusades by Bush on Muslims, why can't the sick fuck just leave people alone and mind his own business?

what else was occuring through this time period that brought even a fraction of the ideas that returned from the crusades. i am only speaking of the common man. In order for a movement such as luther's to have any groudn to spread there needs to be a population fed up with the current system, and you don't know its a bad system u till there is something of contrast. When the church sys
' there is nothing good in this life" then you are told by some guy in your village its not true and that there are some very nice things in the east, you no longer accept that which the church is saying.
As such you do things you might not have. little things. like accepting the observations of a "heretic" when he says the sun is the center of the universe.

Baby steps set things in motion.

my point i have been trying to make is that nothing in history is completely bad. There are always good things.

I'm not convinced that soldiers returning from the Crusades did bring that much with them. Saying that seeds laid then eventually led to, say, the French revolution is ridiculous!

And all I'm saying is trying to make out that the Crusades had their good points is like saying Ted Bundy once bought someone a drink.

Bush - Knows what he's talking about when it comes to Iraq

i agree... history doesn't teach ppl anything. But it's always easy to be wise after events.



anyway.. wheither or not this new plan is good i don't know. But I think it's better than fleeing; it would be cowardly to start a war to fix a country (despite the fact that had nothing to do with it in the first place, the real motifs are somewhat still blurry) only to leave it behind in ruins and chaos just because it didn't went as planned.
For the first time i probably should give a bit credit to Bush for sticking to his guns rather ran fleeing with the tail between his legs just because the citizens of USA are quite unpleased with him... I mean, he knew it probably would cost him his last bit of popularity and his last chance of being re-elected. However, his speech wasn't that convincing and he tried hard with the same ol' strategy: " I'll just mention terrorists and 11/9, and they'll believe me!", while the iraqis was of less importance.. i wonder if i truly believes he's fighting terrorism or if it's just a way of gaining support.. Sure, he's probably defeating some terrorists, but it seems as if they use the term about every arab who doesn't agree with them in Iraq. But it doesn't matter that much, cuz the "war on terror" itself in Iraq doesn't help the problem it only makes things worse, imo. But still, that's not the issue now, the issue now is wheither to help the Iraqis and stabilize their country, or withdraw and leave them to their own fate, which i don't think they are ready to yet.

Course, he can't be re-elected, having served his two terms, so he probably simply doesn't give a toss any more...